Nutritional compositions for improving, treating and/or preventing various medical conditions and methods of using same are provided. Such medical conditions include infection, sepsis, malabsorption, allergy, inflammatory bowel disease, and diarrhea among others. The nutritional compositions include branched chain fatty acids and may include other functional ingredients such as, but not limited to probiotics, nucleotides and amino acids. Methods of administering such nutritional products to individuals in need of same are also provided.